DON MARIO GHIGI, HIS PHYSICIAN, AND SALVATOR ROSA.
(From Lady Morgan's Life of Salvator Rosa.)
The princes of the family of Ghigi had been among the first of the aristocratic virtuosi of Rome to acknowledge the merits of Salvator Rosa, as their ancestors had been to appreciate the genius of Raffaelle. Between the Prince Don Mario Ghigi, (whose brother Fabio was raised to the pontifical throne by the name of Alexander VII.) and Salvator, there seems to have existed a personal intimacy; and the prince's fondness for the painter's conversation was such, that during a long illness he induced Salvator to bring his easel to his bedside, and to work in his chamber at a small picture he was then painting for the prince. It happened, that while Rosa was sketching and chatting by the prince's couch, one of the most fashionable physicians in Rome entered the apartment. He appears to have been one of those professional coxcombs, whose pretensions, founded on unmerited vogue, throws ridicule on the gravest calling.
After some trite remarks upon the art, the doctor, either to flatter Salvator, or in imitation of the physician of the Cardinal Colonna, who asked for one of Raffaelle's finest pictures as a fee for saving the Cardinal's life, requested Don Mario to give him a picture by Salvator as a remuneration for his attendance. The prince willingly agreed to the proposal; and the doctor, debating on the subject he should choose, turned to Salvator and begged that he would not lay pencil to canvas, until he, the Signor Dottore, should find leisure to dictate to him il pensiero e concetto della sua pittura, the idea and conceit of his picture! Salvator bowed a modest acquiescence, and went on with his sketch. The doctor having gone the round of professional questions with his wonted pomposity, rose to write his prescription; when, as he sat before the table with eyes upturned, and pen suspended over the paper, Salvator approached him on tiptoe, and drawing the pen gently through his fingers, with one of his old Coviello gesticulations in his character of the mountebank, he said, "fermati dottor mio! stop doctor, you must not lay pen to paper till I have leisure to dictate the idea and conceit of the prescription I may think proper for the malady of his Excellency."
"Diavalo!" cried the amazed physician, "you dictate a prescription! why, I am the prince's physician, and not you!"
"And I, Caro," said Salvator, "am a painter, and not you. I leave it to the prince whether I could not prove myself a better physician than you a painter; and write a better prescription than you paint a picture."
The prince, much amused, decided in favor of the painter; Salvator coolly resumed his pencil, and the medical cognoscente permitted the idea of the picture to die away, sul proprio letto.